Saturday 14 January 2012

Linux Basic User Security

An Open Source Operating System, which is most popular these days is Linux, Linux have more than 50 different distributions from different organization targeting different kind of users and communities and some time for specific usage like Red Hat Linux for Oracle users. This Linux distribution is specifically developed for Oracle users.

If we consider the market share of Open Source Operating system we have to realize the ground reality and ground reality is different. Open Source Operating systems have less than 10% share in common user category. Microsoft has a big share in common user category due to user-friendly and graphics. This thing make it is most popular operating system among people.

Today Linux users are very few than windows users but in future it will get a big market share. Currently Linux is using for high profile like servers and the setup’s where failure can’t be afforded. Biggest reason of using Linux is the security features of Linux. Linux also have no or less virus threat and it is a biggest edge for Linux setups.

So let’s start with some Linux, I am not making you expert of Linux but I want to tell you something interesting. You can found a wide variety of Linux tutorials on Internet. Here we are just going to discuss only the security features of Linux. Linux has Graphical User Interface and also has command line for user commands.

In security section of Linux we can found Novel App Armor which is application security program and basically dictates what an application can and cannot do.  In user security we can found user management, where you can make users and groups same like windows. Best thing we can see in security of user is the password policy. I always advice people about passwords, never use ordinary words and numbers use as your passwords because they can be crack easily. In Linux you can restrict your user for password selection with password policy.

You can off and on your fire wall same as windows and even if you have Ethernet cards more than one you can easily manage your Ethernet cards with your file wall. In Linux user restriction and directory access is very out class, that’s why you can see 80% of internet based on Linux. In Linux we have directory permission (Read, write and Execute or rwx) and we can restrict our user with these permissions, for example an administrator has all permissions = rwx mean admin can read, write and execute. Other user like a power user has permissions = rw- means power user can Read, write but cannot execute some application. For public permission can be like this = r- – means user can only read, no write and no execute. Directory permission also showed with numbers too like following

Permissions                      owner – group – user
777  is the same as              rwx         rwx       rwx
755   is the same as             rwx         r-x         r-x
666    is the same as            rw-         rw-        rw-
744    is the same as            rwx         r–          r–

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